After almost falling and being unable to rise from the canvas, Broadalbin-Perth came back in a big way by taking fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth in the team scoring behind the efforts of Jordyn DeNeuville, Victoria Opalka, Sarah Naple, Coreena Monroe and Mackenzie DeZolt.

“It looked bleak,” said co-coach Jack Reed.

And co-coach Rob Tuttle’s on-the-fly calculations had his Lakers down by one. “We didn’t account for top finishers who were from incomplete teams,” said Tuttle, “and once the computer drops those individuals from the team scoring, things can change dramatically, like they did today.”

“Today we got lucky,” said Reed. “Maybe we should have stopped on the way home and bought a lotto ticket. But luck sometimes comes to those who place themselves in the right position, and the girls did that especially well today, considering that Elsa Soderberg was in Colorado for a family wedding.”

Providing the luck was freshman Julia Willcox who placed 10th in the team scoring and 13th overall in 20:31.52, and senior Morel Malcolm’s 18thplace finish in 21:08.97.

And then it was Finan Malcolm’s magic run as she took 22nd in 21:30.92 to the Patriots’ Alex Opalka’s 23rd place finish in the team scoring in 21:33.80 – a difference of less than three seconds.

Maria Schillace took 26th among team runners in 21:38.11 to round out the varsity effort. In the JV race at Burnt Hills, it was Makena Gorman taking 46th, Maggie McNeil in 47th and Jillian VanLeer in 53rd leading the team.

While all this was going on, Cooper Watt gave the Skaneateles boys cross country team a seventh-place run in the Saugerties Invitational, part of the Lakers' seventh-place team finish.